American Academy of Political and Social Science

The Right to Life and Latin American Penal Systems

Author(s): Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni
Source: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 506,
Human Rights around the World (Nov., 1989), pp. 57-67
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of
Political and Social Science
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ANNALS, AAPSS, 506, November 1989

The Right to Life and

Latin American Penal Systems

By EUGENIO RAUL ZAFFARONI

ABSTRACT: Deaths at the hands of the state in Latin America, through the
penal system, are a serious menace to democracy in the region, and they are the
worst attacks on human rights. According to the public portrayal of these deaths,
it seems necessary to project a continuous war, sometimes as a political war and
sometimes as a war against common delinquency. Human rights organizations
are usually worried about the first phenomenon and its deaths, but they do not
perceive the enormous importance of the deaths produced by the war against
criminality, which is publicized by the police agencies to justify the use of their
illegal power. Social contamination with common delinquency-and with
marginalization in general -is the tool used to inhibit the public denunciation
of these deaths-the number of which is frequently higher than the number of
deaths caused in cases of open political violence--and to delegitimate any
action along that line, especially through the journalists and social operators of
the law-and-order campaigns that create the public war atmosphere.

Eugenio Raul Zaffaroni isprofessor of criminal law and criminology at the University ofBuenos
Aires and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Criminal Law. He is also a
judge on the Criminal Court of Appeals in Buenos Aires and a member of the Senate Committee
for the Study of a New Argentinian Penal Code. He is the author of many publications, including
Tratado de derecho penal and Manual de derecho penal.
57

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58
T HE present work is an advance report
of the final results of an investiga-
tion of the subject, which is part of a project
set up by the Interamerican Institute of
Human Rights. This investigation com-
prises the first three years of the project,
which will be in progress for another two
years. The general topic is that of human
rights and the penal systems in Latin Amer-
ica; this subject was examined in a general
study that was concluded in 1986. In the
course of the earlier study, some alarming
information emerged about the large num-
ber of deaths caused by the direct action of
the penal systems in the region and about
the indifference of penal systems in the
face of other phenomena that were causing
an even larger number of deaths.
The importance of this fact moved us to
undertake the first factual study of the sub-
ject. The data that disturbed us most con-
cerned the public image of those deaths:
except for the cases of missing people,
generally related to open political violence,
the deaths are announced publicly, that is,
they are reported in different ways by the
mass media and, in many cases, in com-
plete detail. It is outstanding that police
agencies provide exact information and
statistics to the mass media. This means
that they show an involvement in the pub-
licity as a sign of efficiency in the repres-
sive acts.
The first hypothesis was that the phe-
nomenon was measurable through investi-
gating the press. The facts later showed this
to be wrong, as we will see. However, our
first investigation was of the press. With
the available information we cannot mea-
sure the phenomenon exactly, but we can
describe in detail its public portrayal and
we can establish as well a firm hypothesis
concerning its function and mechanics. No
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
less important are the conclusions we can
extract about the real function and the op-
eration of the penal systems.
The study was first faced with the selec-
tion of serious newspapers and following
in them the image of this phenomenon over
five years. This task was done by local
teams in the following cities: Mexico City,
San Jose (extended to the whole country),
Bogota, Quito, Lima, Caracas, Maracaibo,
C6rdoba (Argentina), Buenos Aires, Mon-
tevideo (extended to the whole country),
Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Salvador
(Bahia), and Recife. The results were pre-
sented in a seminar in Salvador (Bahia) in
December 1988 and were discussed with
specialists from the United States and Eu-
rope, which enabled us to use comparative
data and to enrich the hypothesis. The re-
sults of the study in the four Brazilian cities
were finished too recently to analyze them
for this article, so we include only prelim-
inary discussion of this work presented in
the seminar in 1988. At present, we are
entirely dedicated to preparing the final
work. It is a quite difficult task because of
the quantity of information. In this article
we will consider some hypotheses that
have emerged so far and seem to be con-
firmed by the available information that
has been analyzed.
We must comment that these provisional
conclusions can be improved and enriched
with the addition of more information.
THE PATTERN THAT EMERGES
FROM A FIRST APPROACH
The construction of a hypothesis re-
quires, in some way, a theoretical frame.
We believe that this study confirms the fact
that in no way is a theoretical frame satis-
factory for the Latin American criminolog-
LATIN AMERICAN PENAL SYSTEMS
ical questions. Until now, at least, the most
common versions of functionalism, Marx-
ism, and the sociology of conflicts have not
allowed us to explain the phenomena ade-
quately and satisfactorily. In a more exten-
sive way, an approach is achieved through
the structuralist version of the Foucaultian
"microphysics of power," but it requires an
approach that can be nearer to the criminol-
ogy of dependency as the key to the under-
standing of the phenomena in the so-called
developing countries.
There are two theoretical and undeni-
able consequences. First, the originality of
this phenomenon obliges us to use a syn-
cretic theoretical frame, because the
known frameworks do not offer any satis-
factory explanation. Even more, the ex-
treme dangerousness of this phenomenon
requires, from a human rights point of
view, the adoption of a pragmatic criterion:
the main aim must be the necessity of con-
trolling the death phenomenon in the re-
gion. The second consequence is that all
the hypotheses based on theory that pre-
tend to explain the problem on a macro
level can completely distort the perception
of this phenomenon. This consequence
seems to be obvious in any contemporary
criminological study, but it needs to be
specified because it follows from the first
one: the nonexistence of a suitable theoret-
ical frame and the lack of satisfaction
caused by the constrained application of
the usual ones. As a result, a sequence of
intuitive hypotheses is generated, full of
emotion, when we, as investigators, are
also "cognitive subjects" that have intro-
jected the messages of the penal system
and its social control. Whether for confor-
mity or as a reaction, we frequently have
politicized intuitions that suppose the pres-
ence of a dark hand that controls every-
thing. That is, there is an intentionalism
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59
typical of the conspiracy thesis that, ac-
cording to preference, explains the prob-
lem by the action of national or interna-
tional complexes.
The phenomenon under study includes
different kinds of deaths or threats to the
human right to life: (1) deaths in real or
simulated encounters with agencies of the
penal systems, including executions with-
out due process; (2) deaths caused by jail
violence; (3) deaths caused by persons au-
thorized or allowed to carry guns; (4) mur-
ders committed by the personnel of the
penal systems when off duty; and (5) mur-
ders committed by extermination groups.
The other subject that was also studied is
that of transit deaths, which will be ex-
plained in less detail.
The analysis of the recorded informa-
tion showed us a primary classification of
the countries, according to the peculiarities
of the phenomenon. On the one hand, there
are the countries convulsed by open polit-
ical violence-that is, an encounter that
takes place in the presence of large and
violent groups, organized with consider-
able offensive capacity, with a clear and
confessed political design, and that is car-
ried on against both military objectives and
executive agencies of the penal system. On
the other hand, there seem to be two broad
categories of countries that are not beset by
such violence: countries with evident so-
cial contradictions and an increasing level
of conflict; and countries with social con-
flicts controlled in some way.
Even though it is not possible to analyze
the information here, I must explain that
this classification does not follow any pre-
vious hypothesis but emerges from infor-
mation that was gathered. Examination re-
vealed how this phenomenon works in
urban concentrations, according to where
the country falls in the classification. The
60
public portrayal of the deaths differs, or at
least shows a clear tendency to differ, ac-
cording to the classification.
COUNTRIES WITH
OPEN POLITICAL VIOLENCE
It is evident that in two cities in this
study, Bogota and Lima, the deaths caused
by the penal system are largely depicted as
deaths of subversive elements after armed
encounters. The trend is much more evi-
dent in Bogota: there seems to be a large
number of deaths corresponding to subver-
sive or countersubversive activities, as
well as a considerable number of deaths as
a result of ordinary murder. The press does
not seem to deliberately intend to hide
deaths due to ordinary murder, but news
stories on them are relegated to the interior
pages and printed with reduced titles. They
constitute generic news; they are stereo-
typical, lacking the details that ordinarily
distinguish one death from another.
We must observe that in comparison to
Lima, Bogota has the greater degree of
violence, that is, the greater number of
deaths. We must agree that, even though
our study is not quantitative - the nature of
the information forbids this-the fact
emerges from it that the number of deaths
from Peruvian violence is lower than the
number in countries without open politi-
cal violence, as in the Brazilian cities or
Buenos Aires.
In Lima, the other deaths resulting from
the penal system are publicized in more
detail but not in a sensationalist way. This
fact leads us to think that the number of
deaths caused by the penal system outside
of the open political violence should not
exceed the number that is published in the
newspapers or at least that the newspapers'
figure can be taken as a more or less accu-
rate indicator. In any of these countries we
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
can say there is not a deliberate intent to
hide. There is less information on these
deaths in Bogota because the deaths are not
considered newsworthy.
Briefly, then, where open political vio-
lence exists, the deaths by the action of
penal systems are not considered hidden.
Rather, they seem to be considered less
important and are therefore given less
prominence.
COUNTRIES WITHOUT
OPEN POLITICAL VIOLENCE
The cities that attract our attention be-
cause of their contrast with the rest are the
urban concentrations of the countries that
seem to control their own social contradic-
tions without publicizing the deaths. In the
context of our study, these are the main
characteristics of Costa Rica and Uruguay.
Uruguay never had the social contradic-
tions caused by or inherited from the exis-
tence of intensive culture, and Costa Rica
resolved them by means of a so-called nat-
ural democratization that took place.
Both countries-with some exceptions
in the past decade in Uruguay-have
known a long tradition of constitutional
government. The subversive violence and
state terrorism in Uruguay in the 1970s was
not up to the Argentine level, according to
some trustworthy evaluations, such as
those coming from human rights organiza-
tions in Uruguay. In the case of Costa Rica,
one of the main favorable conditions that
allowed resolution of the social contradic-
tions is the position that it occupies in the
power balance of the Central American
region. For Uruguay, it is necessary to re-
member the notorious emigration of young
people. Both Costa Rica and Uruguay have
much lower urban concentrations than the
rest of the countries, and generally their
total population represents one-third of the
LATIN AMERICAN PENAL SYSTEMS
population of one of the great Latin Amer-
ican urban concentrations, such as Sao
Paulo, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, or
Mexico City.
The deaths caused by the penal system
and publicly made known in these coun-
tries are many fewer than in the rest of the
countries that are not plagued by open po-
litical violence. There are no reasons to
suppose that the phenomenon is being hid-
den. In addition, the evidence leads us to
think that the figures are not alarming. The
logical deduction is that it was not neces-
sary for social control to seek remedy in
publicity and that the corporate interests of
the executive agencies do not give rise to
any death.
We can say that something similar oc-
curs in the mediterranean region of Ecua-
dor, where the publicity about deaths is
limited. We have some information on
Quito, and we hope to have more informa-
tion on Guayaquil, which would be very
interesting, given the different characteris-
tics of both cities as urban concentrations
in different regions of the same country.
With the information coming from Quito,
we can affirm that Ecuador seems to be in
the middle of both subgroups of not openly
politically violent countries.
PORTRAYAL OF
PENAL-SYSTEM DEATHS
IN COUNTRIES WITHOUT
OPEN POLITICAL VIOLENCE
The rest of the cities analyzed present
the most interesting and alarming portray-
als of penal-system deaths not only be-
cause of their seriousness but for what they
mean for human rights and for the future of
democracy in the region.
Without considering Mexico City for
the moment, we can affirm that in these
cities, the public announcement of deaths
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61
caused by the penal system has turned into
a daily and normal element of information.
The number of suspects dead in real or
supposed encounters with police forces is
indeed high. We must add that in some
countries, a considerable number of deaths
are attributed to conflicts between mar-
ginal groups, but the penal system does not
interfere with any preventive action. One
cannot dismiss the possibility of alliances
between the agencies of the penal system
and some marginal groups. We can finally
observe in some cities-Rio de Janeiro,
Recife-the existence of extermination
groups that act with total impunity. All
these deaths are publicized in detail. Most
of the time they are cruel and unnecessary,
especially if we consider that our data
come not from the sensationalist press but
from the serious media.
It is impossible for us to provide here the
figures for each city and country analyzed.
Nevertheless, we will mention some fig-
ures to illustrate what we have been ob-
serving through the analysis of the avail-
able information. The figures that we pro-
vide fully prove two things. First, the
deaths related to the penal system are not
the necessary response to violent criminal-
ity, because their number is known to vary
according to phenomena that have nothing
to do with violent criminality. Second, the
daily announcement of the deaths does not
extend to the interational press because it
is considered a normal element of informa-
tion, even though the magnitude of the
deaths can be higher than in the openly
politically violent countries.
BUENOS AIRES AND
FACTORS EXTERNAL TO
CRIMINAL VIOLENCE
Part of the city of Buenos Aires belongs
to the province of Buenos Aires, and part
62
of the city is federalized. In the provincial
part, the city provincial police operate, and
in the other part, the federal police do. In
1982 there were a total of 61 deaths by the
penal system, 44 of them attributed to pro-
vincial police and 17 to federal police. In
January 1983 a new wave of deaths oc-
curred in the province of Buenos Aires.
These deaths occurred because two months
earlier an underground group had emerged
among the provincial police backing salary
increases and better working conditions.
The military dictatorship constructed a
convincing image of public security and so
the press was controlled; it was not possi-
ble to install a law-and-order campaign.
After 1984 the press was not under cen-
sorship. At first, with the constitutional
government, a liberal reaction was pro-
duced in the population, causing police
authority to be rejected, public opinion to
go against the genocidal army, and so on.
The response was immediate, and a
law-and-order campaign was undertaken.
The result was a considerable increase in
the number of deaths, compared to the time
when the democratic government took
power. During 1985 the number increased
even more. In July the number was consid-
erably higher in the province of Buenos
Aires, coinciding with the reform of the
procedure code, which forbade the police
to give instruction in procedures. The in-
struction was a task that they had been
performing unconstitutionally and that was
the source of great corruption. For March
we can also observe an increase that coin-
cided with the declaration of the unconsti-
tutionality of the arrest and detention of
any citizen for 24 hours - another fount of
corruption. A decrease in the number of
deaths can be observed for the second half
of 1985. The decline coincides with a bru-
tal event - the slaughter of a whole family
by the provincial police-with the elec-
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
tions, and with the broadcast of alarming
facts by ultrarightist sectors - according to
official reports. For 1986 a recrudescence
in the law-and-order campaign is noticed
until the middle of the year, when the inte-
rior minister was questioned by the Con-
gress, doubting the investigative capacity
of the authorities and causing the dismissal
of both police chiefs, in addition to the
discovery of the participation of police of-
ficers in the most savage criminal events
emphasized by the press. An abrupt de-
crease is observed in deaths by the police
and it is maintained for some time by the
federal police, but it is promptly discon-
tinued in the province. There are obviously
different policies emerging from the two
police agencies.
Taking the year 1982 as a base, it is
fairly clear that with the beginning of the
election campaign of 1983 a framework of
insecurity was established in the police
agencies that increased the number of
deaths by 44.26 percent in 1983, still dur-
ing the dictatorship. This figure rose to
113.11 percent in 1984, during a broad
constitutional government, and reached
311.48 percent in 1985, sheltered by a
law-and-order campaign that provoked
the citizens' insecurity with the approval
of the government and certain journal-
ists who held notorious roles during the
dictatorship.
In 1986, with the peculiarities that I
have already mentioned, the number of
deaths decreased, but it was still 145.10
percent higher than in 1982. In data gath-
ered later, we can notice that the time when
the figures were lower, even lower than in
1982, was November 1987, the month of
the province governor's election and the
renewal of deputies at Congress.
If we carefully examine the information
we have, it becomes evident that at certain
times when the number of deaths increased
LATIN AMERICAN PENAL SYSTEMS
notoriously, the number of wounded and
arrested in real or supposed encounters di-
minished, until we have months in which
there are no wounded or arrested but only
deaths resulting from those encounters.
This reveals that on some occasions the
aim is to kill. As there is no explanation in
the criminal violence for changes in the
figures, the percentage of wounded cannot
be altered easily. Of every hundred persons
participating in real or supposed armed
encounters with police agencies in 1985,
81 were killed and 19 arrested; in 1986, 92
were killed and 8 arrested.
It is useful to add that the deaths by the
penal system are concentrated. We can es-
tablish geographical areas of deaths that
correspond to well-defined jurisdictions
and police headquarters and that vary with
the changes of chiefs.
During the period analyzed, police
news passed from the interior pages of the
newspapers to the front pages, the amount
of space devoted to police news was dou-
bled, and the advertising space on those
pages was tripled. This information has
been requested from a journal that prints
1.5 million copies per issue and that has a
national circulation. It can be considered
the most powerful journal in Argentina and
the one with the best status, after the break-
down or the public setback of the two old,
traditional journals. The total population of
the city-federal and provincial sectors
combined-is nearly 8 million. We have
determined the total number of deaths
caused by the penal system to be approxi-
mately 700 between 1984 and 1987.
COMPARISON WITH
PERUVIAN FIGURES
Because the situation of Peru is much
more publicized internationally, due to its
open political violence, it is useful to com-
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63
pare Peruvian figures to the figures we
have given for Buenos Aires. It is possible
to object that the center of the open politi-
cal violence in Peru is not located in Lima,
the city we used in our study. But it is useful
to know that the mean number of missing
persons in all Peru from 1984 to 1988 was
105 a year: 177 in 1984, 94 in 1985, and
between 111 and 117 in the years 1986-88.
Besides, we have collected information from
the whole country to meet this objection.
The following deaths were attributed to
the violence of the penal system: in 1982,
18; in 1983, 20; in 1984, 21; in 1985, 26;
in 1986, 62. The public officers who were
victims of this violence numbered: 40, 84,
92, 75, and 149 in those same years. The
figures for deaths in jail are high: 14, 45,
36, 37, and 256, respectively. The number
of citizens killed by terrorist violence is
also high: 38, 407, 678, 157, and 198, re-
spectively. This means that facing this vio-
lence-which is quite considerable if we
judge it by the number of dead citizens-
were a number of now dead and missing
persons. Those who faced violence in jail
or death at the hands of police agencies or
were missing persons totaled 307 in 1983,
174 in 1984, 156 in 1985, and 425 in 1986.
This last figure includes the deaths caused
in Lima's jails in the horrible ways that are
publicly known. If we compare these fig-
ures with those of Buenos Aires, we will
find that sometimes they were higher than
or equal to those of Buenos Aires. In 1985
there were 156 dead or missing persons in
Peru, but in Buenos Aires the state deaths
totaled 251 without any open political vio-
lence. For 1986, if we do not count the
deaths that occurred in Lima's jails, the
figure for Buenos Aires is still superior.
This must alarm us about the nature of
the phenomenon: the deaths in a penal sys-
tem of an openly politically violent country
can be fewer than the ones produced in a
64
country where this kind of violence does
not exist. That is, the penal system can be
more violent than when reacting against
open political violence but, because this
circumstance is not being hidden-be-
cause the news is published in newspapers
of major circulation-announcement of it
is not capable of causing internal or inter-
national alarm. The deaths are accepted as
normal phenomena that do not even mobi-
lize the human rights organizations.
THE CASE OF MEXICO CITY
Mexico City presents a special case in
the publicizing of deaths in the penal sys-
tem. There are solid reasons to suppose that
even though news is not hidden, there is at
least a carelessness about it, especially
about citizens' deaths at the hands of po-
lice. There is no available information
about the real facts, but the news registered
by newspapers is practically incredible, es-
pecially if we have in mind the magnitude
of urban concentration and the incidence of
conflict in Mexico City. Facing this pan-
orama, we cannot believe that the numbers
of cases broadcast- 7 in 1982, 22 in 1983,
17 in 1984, and 16 in 1985-reflect real
figures. There is an obvious interest in not
announcing the deaths. The numbers of
police officers' deaths are announced,
however, and they are high: 42 in 1982, 62
in 1983, 55 in 1984, and 60 in 1985. It can
be observed that the number of deaths
caused by off-duty police officers was 79
in four years and, of these, 33 were also
police officers.
In Mexico City, it is quite clear, there is
no interest in showing the deaths caused by
the penal system. On the contrary, there is
a special stress on publicizing the police
officers' deaths, although, at the same time,
there does not seem to be a serious effort to
protect the officers' lives. The latter fact
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
obviously emerges from the number of vic-
tims who are police officers.
WHAT ARE THE CONSTANTS?
What can we infer from a panorama that
seems to be so varied? Over the well-
known differences there really seems to be
a prevailing note that emerges when a con-
flictive overflow takes place instead of so-
cial contradictions.
When open political violence exists, the
executive agencies of the penal system feel
secure, because they are needed and there
is no way to take away the power they
possess. When this situation is not present,
the efficacy of the agencies is not evident
through the exhibition of their so-called
war deaths, and these agencies try to re-
cover their secure position by means of
projecting another war; because open po-
litical violence does not exist any more,
there should be a war against ordinary
delinquency.
The power of police agencies is trans-
ferred in the corporate interests of the agen-
cies, and to preserve them, the power must
not be diminished. Police agencies are nec-
essary to political agencies, or at least the
latter need the former not to declare a sort
of strike of indifference that could allow a
chaotic atmosphere to endanger the politi-
cal system. To face this extortion, political
agencies maintain the power of police
agencies. Nevertheless, there are sectors of
political agencies and judicial sectors that
cut or try to cut this power. In addition, the
democratic process itself can cut this
power, despite resistance by political groups.
The reduction of the police agencies'
power in a constitutional system is a struc-
tural result of the democratic system and
not an effect of the politicians' desire in
particular; politicians frequently would
prefer to avoid conflicts. This reduction
LATIN AMERICAN PENAL SYSTEMS
affects the corporate interests and particu-
larly reduces corruption, which is more or
less institutionalized; that is, it decreases
licit or illicit incomes. The agencies can
maintain their power only by generating
another war situation, and that explains the
way in which deaths arise in the penal
system and their publicity: the determina-
tion to show that the penal-system deaths
can be explained only by showing publicly
the existence of a war and exhibiting the
dead enemies.
Such an excuse is not necessary in
openly politically violent situations; it is
needed only when these situations do not
exist or when they end.
Mexico City does not escape this rule.
It shows only a different kind of death:
police officers'. We must not forget that in
Latin America the criminalized, the victim-
ized, and the police belong generally to the
same social stratum. The war image is pro-
jected in the same way, by showing the
enemies' dead bodies or by showing their
own dead soldiers. In either case, an image
of public war is being projected.
The exhibition of deaths causes public
interest. Attempts have been made to ex-
plain this interest, and the explanations
have taken many forms, from a morbid
interest to a natural interest. Whatever type
the interest is, the certain fact is that publi-
cizing the deaths attracts and increases the
attention. Without censure, the publicity
agencies whet the appetite of attention and
thereby produce a multiplier effect for the
phenomenon. The law-and-order cam-
paign is established easily, reinforced by
some journalists who make a more or less
conscious contribution by proposing re-
pressive solutions to every single social
conflict. We must not forget that the most
privileged sectors of Latin American socie-
ties are seriously alarmed by any attempt at
popular organization in a horizontal form.
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65
POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES
Through these constants we can per-
ceive the political perspectives of the phe-
nomenon. We have already said that we
cannot search for a conspiring theory.
Maybe only some privileged sectors, with
a more or less real degree of consciousness,
join their voices through some public opin-
ion operators. But they only join a course
already in process; in no way are they the
conductors or the promoters of it.
What is certain is that this panorama
allows us to conclude that the manifest
function of penal systems in Latin Amer-
ica, as being in charge of the guardianship
of fundamental rights and principally the
right to life, is false. Our penal systems
cause an extraordinary number of deaths in
comparison with those of Europe, the
United States, Canada, and Japan. Those
deaths are broadcast in order to maintain an
atmosphere of continuous war, which
sometimes seems to be a political war and,
on other occasions, a war against common
delinquency.
This situation is even more evident if we
analyze the deaths that occur in transit. The
figures are very high, involving nearly
6000 in Argentina and nearly 50,000 in
Brazil. The penal system does not take any
effective precautions, and the whole nor-
mative order does not care about the prob-
lem. We have to take into consideration
that there is not even provision for a civil
reparation, which would be a serious coun-
termotivation. In Peru, for instance, the
amount of an indemnity for death is nearly
$300. The penal system's indifferent omis-
sion on this subject is plain. From now on,
the penal-system discourse is false and the
judicial discourse is completely empty of
content.
All this has deeply serious conse-
quences for the political perspective of the
66
region and especially for its democratic
future. It is impossible to ignore the fact
that nowadays the productive systems of
our countries are suffering a severe con-
traction, that every day there are more
young people rejected by the system, as
well as more adult people who are expelled
from it. Juvenile marginalization and ag-
gression are a result of the phenomenon of
penal-system deaths, as is the adult self-
aggression that is transferred into a high
number of suicides. The Argentine suicide
rate, for instance, is similar to the number
of deaths by transit and exceeds the Swedish
rate, even if the information on this topic is
mostly unknown. Heteroaggression and
self-aggression are two effects with the
same origin, namely, the anomie produced
by the severe contraction of the productive
system in a so-called developing society. In
this emergency, police agencies that, be-
cause of their corporate interests, want to
build a war scenario do not contribute to
the pacification of a nonpeaceful situation.
We must add that showing the deaths as
a daily and normal element in public infor-
mation-that is, exhibiting the state vic-
tims as an everyday source of security-
contributes to distorting the public image
of the state as supplier of security. It
banalizes the deaths and generates the con-
viction that murder by the state is necessary
to control the enemy at war.
The vocabulary used in publicizing
these deaths is warlike and generates the
paradox that the people perceive death by
the state as something easygoing. Such
aberration is introjected so much that
thinking in any other way becomes dis-
agreeable, a result of a logic branded as
idealistic, if not dissolving, subversive, an-
archic, or Marxist. Behind all this, the po-
lice agencies regain and occupy more po-
sitions of power without control, which
menace democracy, because they foreclose
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
the possibility of community organization,
something perceived as dangerous by the
privileged sectors. The danger then arises
of stopping any social development and of
producing, in the long term, bursts of irra-
tional public violence.
In the people's sentiment, troubled in a
vindicatory sense, there is an enormous
disdain for the judicial warranties that are
always considered as obstacles to the re-
venge claimed by social operators, sowing
hatred and instigating death. The deforma-
tion of the public conscience is also alarming.
In addition to this, the judicial discourse
is evidently false in the face of the real
social impact of the penal system. We are
not far from public disdain for rights and
their limits. Under these conditions, our
penal systems, because of the number of
murders caused and tolerated, turn into
genocide machinery in our countries. In
Argentina, with a population of fewer than
30 million, the penal system causes in Bue-
nos Aires alone four times the number of
deaths caused in five years by acquired
immune deficiency syndrome in the whole
country, and it remains motionless in the
face of the primary cause of death among
the young: transit.
We believe that there are possibilities
for controlling the phenomenon and that
some of them are now emerging spontane-
ously. Despite the violence of the penal
system, community action is apparent.
Such is the case in Peru: nearly two-thirds
of the population solve their conflicts out-
side the state institutions.
We feel that the process of neutralizing
this genocidal phenomenon must be sup-
ported and stimulated. At the level of re-
gional human rights organizations, it
should be noted that not only should deaths
by the penal system in an openly politically
violent climate be amended, but so should
deaths that occur where there is no such
LATIN AMERICAN PENAL SYSTEMS
violence. The deaths are even more danger-
ous where this kind of violence does not
appear. In this article we have not included
Brazilian data, but the Brazilian figures are
remarkably higher than the ones listed
herein. Nor have we considered the rural
violence of Brazil, which is a phenomenon
left aside in our study.
It is very interesting to note that many
human rights organizations only notice the
politically violent deaths; when this vio-
lence is not present, they do not act. Fear
of being discredited as a result of the vio-
lation of the prohibition of coalition -that
is, the fear of being contaminated by the
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q (Paul Chevigny, New York Univer-
sity, New York City): I have a question
about the causal relationship between the
authoritarian dictatorships in countries like
Argentina. In your talk you say that the
creation of a fear of crime replaces the
control of a state of war under a dictator-
ship. Do you think that there was similar
police violence before the dictatorship
began in 1970? I would ask the same ques-
tion about Brazil - do you think there was
similar police violence in the 1960s? I un-
derstand that no one knows for sure. Also,
do you think that police violence against
ordinary people is one of the causes of the
development of the dictatorship?
A: We studied police violence in Argen-
tina for only five years but my personal
impression is the following: police vio-
lence in Argentina was high for several
years, but in the dynamic of our society the
power of the police agencies increased and
it was power without control. This power
without control means corruption, and cor-
ruptions means increased incomes to the
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67
victim, who is labeled as an ordinary delin-
quent-paralyzes those human rights
groups from taking any action. What they
do not perceive is that this paralysis is
extremely dangerous to the political future
of the region because the executive agen-
cies feel sheltered and omnipotent, and
their power cannot be admitted in any dem-
ocratic system and particularly in a region
that requires effective solutions to prob-
lems and where conflict is increasing, be-
cause of the crisis in the productive system.
We hope this study can help at least to
call attention to the extreme gravity of the
phenomenon.
police agencies. Of course, during the dic-
tatorships the possibility of extra income is
increased, and when a dictatorship ends,
police agencies want to expand all of this
power, and then we are in a continued
process of giving more power to the police
agencies without control. There are some
accidents that are natural or structural to
democracy although the political agencies
do not want to have trouble with the police
agencies. Sometimes groups, political or
civic, try to contain or to control the police
power, and here we must be very clear
about this problem. Sometimes, we, espe-
cially we lawyers, think that if we change
laws, we change reality. Sometimes when
we change, the effects in Latin America are
greater reactions, killing more persons to
defend the power of the police against the
new liberal legislation. So sometimes lib-
eral legislation, introduced with a worth-
while motive, increases the number of ex-
ecutions without due process practiced by
the police.